Introduction

In the summer of 2013, Demand Metric completed a benchmark study on Sales Enablement, discovering varying views and levels of contribution for the function. At that time, Sales Enablement seemed to suffer from an identity crisis, with many study participants unclear on what the function was or what it was supposed to do. Other participants in the 2013 study had a very clear vision for Sales Enablement, reporting that it was making significant contributions. At the time, about half of the study participants had some level of commitment to a Sales Enablement function in their organizations.

Today, the understanding of Sales Enablement seems much clearer. Many organizations are placing a heavy emphasis on sales and marketing alignment, and Sales Enablement has proven an effective strategy for achieving better alignment and facilitating better performance, which generates measurable results. Anyone who is part of the marketing or sales community has probably observed that the Sales Enablement strategy has gained traction in the past few years. Where it once might have seemed like a fad, Sales Enablement as a business strategy seems to have earned legitimacy, with an increasing number of organizations committing to it.

Sales Enablement is a cross-functional discipline that links corporate business goals with tactical execution on the sales and marketing front. Skura and Demand Metric collaborated to field a study that examined the extent to which organizations are using Sales Enablement, what best practices are in use and what benefits the strategy is delivering. The results of that study are contained in this report.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Executive Summary

Sales Enablement Commitment

Content Challenges & Outcomes

Content Creation & Usage

Managing Content

Lead Nurturing & Qualification

Benefits

Analyst Bottom Line

Acknowledgements

About Skura

About Demand Metric

Appendix - Survey Background

Research Methodology

This 2015 Sales Enablement Benchmark Study survey was administered online during the period of August 31 through September 16, 2015. During this period, 143 responses were collected, 131 of which were complete enough for inclusion in the analysis. The representativeness of these results depends on the similarity of the sample to environments in which this survey data is used for comparison.